Darling Jack. Mary McBride
as a shaft of granite, when, for all her wily and well-practiced endeavors, Ada Campbell had failed. So had the two cool-handed pickpockets earlier on the train.
Jack was at a loss to understand it. All he had done was look at her there in the smoking car. At the blond curls that had escaped her neat chignon and ringed her head like a wild halo. At the flush of color on her cheeks. At her silly spectacles and then—dear Lord!—at her shockingly sensual mouth.
It must have been her mouth, he thought now as he sat safely alone in the dining room of the Riverton Hotel, and warned himself to avoid staring at her lush lips, the mere thought of which was once again having a significant effect upon his body. He shifted in his chair, glancing toward the door that opened onto the lobby. Where the devil was she? He had told her he’d wait for her downstairs while she freshened up. He glared at his watch. That had been nearly an hour ago.
The woman obviously wasn’t accustomed to traveling, Jack thought with some irritation. Earlier, upon disembarking, he had left her with two quarters meant as a tip for the porter, and when he returned from securing them a carriage, Mrs. Matlin had handed him one of the coins.
“What’s that?” he had asked, thoroughly confused.
“Half the gratuity,” she had answered in that small, breathy voice of hers. “I helped with our baggage, Mr. Hazard. I’m sure Mr. Pinkerton will greatly appreciate our keeping an eye on expenses.”
“Bloody hell!”
The mouse had flinched when he bellowed, but he hadn’t been able to contain it. Spending—flagrantly, outrageously, blindly—was part of his damn plan. It was absolutely necessary. And now it seemed he’d picked a bloody accountant—worse, a skinflint—to help him accomplish it.
God Almighty, he hoped the woman wasn’t upstairs pouting. She hadn’t said two words on the carriage ride from the depot to the hotel, and hardly more than that once they’d been shown to their room. Then she’d seemed undisguisedly relieved when he announced he’d wait downstairs. Which he’d been doing now for fifty-eight minutes.
He cast a murderous glance at the water goblet before him, and his fists clenched under the tablecloth. Sweet Lord in heaven, how he needed a drink.
“You need to get downstairs,” Anna urged her own reflection as she stood before the dresser, brushing her hair for the third—and last, she swore!—time. Not only was she famished, but she was also desperate to hear the details of this assignment.
In the mirror, the bed loomed up behind her with its two plump pillows. And though she kept looking—kept hoping, actually—the furniture refused to change, as did the mathematics. Two pillows. One bed.
She heard Mr. Pinkerton’s voice again. “Mr. Hazard needs a wife.” It wasn’t that she had misunderstood him. Rather, it seemed that in ail the excitement about the assignment, Anna hadn’t quite thought through all the ramifications of Mr. Pinkerton’s words.
As soon as they entered this hotel room, however, those ramifications had been obvious. Two pillows. One bed. She had felt the blood draining from her face. She was still a little pale, she thought, leaning closer to the mirror and examining her cheeks. Perhaps if she brushed her hair more vigorously it would bring some blood up to her scalp.
“Mr. Hazard needs a wife.” That was what the man had told her. He hadn’t said partner, although that was what Anna had deemed it. And she’d been so excited by the prospect of working with the legendary, glorious and godlike agent
Now, though, after that brief glimpse of his humanity this morning, Anna realized all too well that Johnathan Hazard was a man. He was flesh and blood and all that those two qualities implied.
She swallowed hard. What in the world was she going to do? She had been so grateful when Hazard offered to wait downstairs, because she had needed time to think. But that had been an hour ago, and thinking about her situation hadn’t improved it. It was tune to take action.
It was also time for supper, her rumbling stomach reminded her. Anna exchanged her hairbrush for her handbag, then gave the bed a last glance before walking out of the room and descending the stairs to the lobby.
Though a small hotel in a small town, the Riverton seemed intent upon rivaling New York or Boston in brocades and crystal and glinting brass. It was quite elegant. Probably the finest hotel Anna would ever see, she thought, so she tried to take in each detail.
There was a uniformed gentleman near the front desk who bowed when she approached. “Allow me to show you to the dining room, Mrs. Hazard.”
Anna nearly looked over her shoulder to see to whom he was speaking before she remembered that she was Mrs Hazard. Oh, Lord.
“I’ll find it myself if you’ll just point the way,” she told him, amazed and rather embarrassed by the attentions of this stranger.
He pointed a white-gloved hand toward a dining room that was far more elegant than any Anna had ever seen. She lingered a moment in the arched doorway, relieved to see that Johnathan Hazard sat alone in the room, and that his back was toward her, allowing her a little time to compose herself before confronting such a glamorous man in a setting that, while intimidating to her, seemed his natural habitat.
She drew in a wavering breath, found it laced with the fragrance from numerous bowls of roses on the candlelit tables, and steeled herself once more to demand to know the particulars of their assignment. Especially, and most critically, one particular room upstairs and one particular bed.
“Mr. Hazard. The particulars. I insist.”
At the sound of that small but determined voice, Jack nearly shot out of his chair. He was not one used to being taken unawares, and now the mouse had crept up behind him and shocked the devil out of him. He wondered vaguely if liquor and opium had combined to strip his senses permanently. Then he decided it was merely the invisible, wraithlike qualities of the mouse. Allan should have made use of her years ago. The woman could come and go like smoke.
He seated her, and beckoned to the waiter who had been casting him anxious glances from the kitchen door for the past fifteen minutes. The fellow fairly flew across the room now, a plate in each hand.
Mrs. Matlin lifted her chin the moment he arrived. “I’d like something simple, but substantial, if you please,” she said. “A chop would be fine.”
The waiter cleared his throat and sent a wide-eyed signal of distress to Jack.
“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you, dear,” A chop, for God’s sake. He nodded to the waiter, who slid the plates onto the table and then quickly retreated.
“Oh, my,” the mouse breathed as she gazed down at half a dozen succulent oysters, bedded in their shells upon shaved ice, and garnished with wedges of lemon and sprigs of parsley.
Good Lord, had the woman never seen an oyster, he wondered? She looked as if someone had just presented her with a dead cat for her supper. She nudged her silly spectacles up her nose and compressed her lips into a thin white line, contemplating the mollusks.
Of course, Jack thought suddenly, he wasn’t all that sorry to see that lush mouth pinch into something less desirable and distracting.
“Enjoy,” he told her coolly, proceeding to do just that with his own supper.
For a mouse, Jack thought as the meal progressed, her face had an infinite variety of expressions. First there was the near horror at the oysters, which she chewed doggedly after great deliberation over the trio of forks to the left of her plate. Then there was the consternation at the cream of celery soup, and the little twitch of delight when she picked up the soupspoon without hesitation. Next came what appeared to be relief at the sight of the trout and its accompaniment of spring potatoes. The woman was obviously hungry, and concerned, through the first two courses, that that was all the supper she was going to get.
The salad seemed to confuse her, and when the beef Wellington steamed